[Cronstintein]

So I was weighing the merits of street Sam vs adepts last night and I think I figured out why it skews in the adept's favor.
The cyberware rules for chargen are really limiting.

The combination of
1) not being able to buy better than alpha grade 'ware.
2) not being able to carry over chargen money into play.

So this makes a Sam almost forced into loading up on essence heavy purchases with the expectation of some day replacing ware with a better version later to create an essence hole.  This is super inefficient!  You're essentially buying your cyber twice this way and it's already hellishly expensive. 
This stands out most clearly when looking at wired reflexes. 
Wr3 costs 5e and 217k.  The adept cost is 3.5pp.  To get the Sam's cost roughly equivalent to the adept you need betaware to get wr3 down to 3.5e (at $325500). 

Unfortunately this is not legal rule wise.  If it were I think you'd see more sams because they could make a build with a few good upgrades and leave themselves room to grow without the awkward replacement cyber swapping nonsense.  There is already a hard nuyen cap, isn't that enough to keep things roughly balanced?

Anyway would it break the game if you let sams have full cyber access at chargen?  I'm curious what y'all think who have more experience.
EDIT: after looking closely at the bioware, maybe lifting the restriction only on cyber would be safer.  There's a lot of awesome bioware that is prevented in chargen strictly by availability.

[Reaver]

There is more going on to balance things then you are first seeing.

The adept is a karma based growth, as such, his progress is always going to be slowed down by the ever increasing demand for karma to boost his skills, attributes,  magic, and initiation.

Samurai,  deckers, riggers are more cash dependant on advancement. They get a larger bonus and improvement by swapping out gear and cyber as they get money. While the karma they get can also improve their respective abilities.


In short. While that adept may seem more powerful at the get go, over the course of play, the sammy will catchup and pass the adept very quickly... and stay ahead until very late in the game.. (300+ karma)

[Michael Chandra]

Try a High Life campaign if you want more access to stuff.

[gmoney999]

Yeah I think you are selling the Street Sam short.  I'm going to let someone else do the math on advancement, but no adept can be like a 40+ armor street Sam with a Pain editor and Platelet Factories.  The best faces are always going to have tailored pheremones (+1 to 8 skills for 30k is crazy!), best hackers will have logic boosters.  So far I think the designers have done a good job of making them both desirable and with seperate niches.  When a grenade gets thrown in the elevator, you will wish you were a street sam!

[martinchaen]

When a grenade gets thrown in any enclosed space, you'll wish you were elsewhere is what :-)

But yeah, I also think there are some innate differences in what street samurai and adepts do; without optimizing too much or spreading oneself too thin, a street samurai is more overt and in your face, represented by shiny chrome and obvious weapons; that's not to say they can't be stealthy, but direct action with big guns is their forte. Adepts, on the other hand, are like magicians; they can bring their entire arsenal with them by carrying their hands in their pockets, and so make much better covert action specialists. Both have the capabilities to shine both in ranged and melee combat, but the way they go about it are slightly different.

I too balked at the idea of never attaining that last rating of synaptic boosters, or some other shiny piece of gear. But with even just a little bit of optimizing a street samurai or am adept can easily throw down 16 dice on the attack, the street samurai can achive high 20s armor pools, whereas the adepts can reach high 10s dodge pools.

Are they exactly the same? Of course not. And I for one like it that way.

[JimmyCrisis]

With edge, initiative enhancement isn't the trump card it used to be.  When comparing Sammies to Adepts, it's best to compare what each other cannot do, rather then what they overlap on.  For instance, a Sammy could smuggle all kinds of weapons and gear in hidden compartments or holsters, and synthetic cyberlimbs have a conceal ability of -8, better than nearly all weapons.  On the other hand, an Adept could kill spirits with their bare hands.  Or they could both spec-out to use two weapon gun-fu, and acheive roughly similar results while otherwise being pretty boring.

Besides, Shadowrun isn't about four combat monsters sitting in a tavern waiting for a Johnson to give them a tribe of orks to kill. 

Wait. 

I guess sometimes it is.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

With edge, initiative enhancement isn't the trump card it used to be.

Y'know, I keep hearing this, and to an extent I understand it, but when you get down to it ... it just ain't true, Maynard.  Or rather, it's true, but it's pretty goddamn short-sighted.

You have a maximum of 6 - 7 if you're human - Edge.  Spending it means, if you'll pardon the expression, Shit Just Got Real.  Some characters are, sure, gonna max this sucker out if they can, but that is still only six trump cards.  If and/or when the crap really hits the fan - not just six seconds of chaos, but when you're trying to fight your way clear of the building, or there are a LOT of flesh-form insect spirits to kill, or KE or the Mafia or Yakuza or (god help you) a megacorporation is hunting you down, you need to save your skin a lot.  Tossing an edge at initiative suuuuddenly looks a lot less appetizing when you have to do it 20 times, y'know?

Initiative enhancements mean You Don't Need To Blow Edge Just To Go Fast - you can spend it on other things, like saving the life of the moron who blew all his edge in the first ten seconds trying to go as fast as you ...

[JimmyCrisis]

Short-sighted?  That's a big ol' negative, good buddy.  Endurance is a virtue that you pay a price for. 

Any character build has trade-offs.  In this case, your Adept or Sammy is paying, say, half of their money/points on initiative enhancement if they want to get good at it.  Or they could invest in a little edge (and maybe a little kamikaze or jazz) and spend the rest of their money on being twice as good at doing the rest of their job.  That's a bit hyperbolic, but in my experience it rings true.  After all, if you are generally more competent, you don't need to rely on luck.

Second, on a 'meta' level, your edge pool is a fluid thing that can be built back up during gameplay as you use it. When the drek hits the fan, and you're breaking back out of a corporate compound, good roleplaying and ingenuity will earn you back those points.  This relies on the GM not being stingy with the points, but it is what it is.

Ultimately, I would consider buying Initiative Boosters and just relying on Edge (and accepting the risks) to be fairly balanced choices. 

[WellsIDidIt]

Any character build has trade-offs.  In this case, your Adept or Sammy is paying, say, half of their money/points on initiative enhancement if they want to get good at it.  Or they could invest in a little edge (and maybe a little kamikaze or jazz) and spend the rest of their money on being twice as good at doing the rest of their job.  That's a bit hyperbolic, but in my experience it rings true.  After all, if you are generally more competent, you don't need to rely on luck.

The problem with that line of thinking is that with a combat based character, initiative is what makes them twice as good at their job.

A slow character with a high skill will likely get half the attacks of a high speed character. Sure he may one shot some guys, but if the GM is running composure checks right, the other character with less skill but twice as many attacks almost always does more.

In a run where the characters have done everything right, you normally won't see a difference. But if, as Wyrm was saying, the shit hits the fan and you have more than rounds of combat than edge, initiative characters seem to always pull ahead.

As for the metalevel, if your GM is handing out edge like candy because you didn't take initiative boosters, then there's no reason to have more than a 1 in edge (after all, he'll just feel sorry for you and refresh it, right?). Sure, I toss edge at players for good roleplaying, but I'm not going to toss 12 points at them in a single scene. That's not stingy.

Initiative Boosters and Edge seem like balanced choices until you have more than edge combat rounds in a row against heavy threats. Then it becomes extremely clear that the resource that never goes away is more powerful than the resource that it limited.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Short-sighted?  That's a big ol' negative, good buddy.  Endurance is a virtue that you pay a price for. 

Any character build has trade-offs.  In this case, your Adept or Sammy is paying, say, half of their money/points on initiative enhancement if they want to get good at it.  Or they could invest in a little edge (and maybe a little kamikaze or jazz) and spend the rest of their money on being twice as good at doing the rest of their job.  That's a bit hyperbolic, but in my experience it rings true.  After all, if you are generally more competent, you don't need to rely on luck.

Second, on a 'meta' level, your edge pool is a fluid thing that can be built back up during gameplay as you use it. When the drek hits the fan, and you're breaking back out of a corporate compound, good roleplaying and ingenuity will earn you back those points.  This relies on the GM not being stingy with the points, but it is what it is.

Ultimately, I would consider buying Initiative Boosters and just relying on Edge (and accepting the risks) to be fairly balanced choices.

You amuse me.  Can I keep you?

Look, I'm not disagreeing that there are trade-offs with any build; that's blatantly obvious.  But what you're claiming as optimal and what actually would be optimal is clearly not the same.  Let's take a look at your 6 (or 7) Edge character who spends money being 'twice as good at their job'.  Let's presume that these are both 'street warrior' humans.

You're suggesting, it seems, we both spend that A Priority on Resources; I'm down with that, so 450k for each of us it is.  We're both non-magical, so Magic is gonna be E for both of us.  Here's where we split.

You want a high Edge - 5 or a 6 - so you're pretty much forced to be at Priority C.  You might get away with D, but hey, spending more than half your chargen-ending Karma on one attribute is semi-crazy.  I'm good with having a 'low' Edge, so I'll put it at D - and not have to worry about boosting it, which means my ending Karma can go towards other things that help me do my job better, like a higher skill, other attribute, or hey, contacts.  Yours: C; Mine: D.

So you have either Attributes at B (20) or at D (14), while I have Attributes at B (20) or C (16).  Let's say we both go for Attributes B, 'cause those suckers are hell to boost with Karma; we even choose the same Reaction and Intuition, since that's what we're talking about.  That puts your Skills at D (22 skill points, with 0 for skill groups) and mine at C (28 skill points, with 2 for skill groups).  So with six higher points in my skills AND two points for a skill group, already I'm better at doing my job - my character is, in point of fact, already more competent than your character.

Now, you're claiming I have to 'spend half of (my) money/points on initiative enhancement if they want to get good at it.'  Well, what's 'good'?  Twice normal human speed?  I put down 149k - a third of my money - and I get +2 Reaction and +2d6 for my initiative Every Single Time.  Sure, that Rating 3 is almost a full 1/2 - not to mention 5 full points of Essence - but this latter is more the reason why I wouldn't go there, because there's so much more fun stuff to use.

Now, compare this to a straight-out 5d6 for your Edge-rolled Initiative.  You roll your 5d6 (average 17) + Reaction + Intuition; I roll my 3d6 (average 10) + Reaction + Intuition + 2 - so really, my average roll is 12.  We can both add in Reaction Enhancers (you without penalty, me needing to go wireless to get the synergy), but when it comes down to it, I have enough cash and Essence left with my Wired 2 (or spend a little more, 190k, and have spent half the Essence - bioware's my preferred route anyhow) to get most of the top-of-the-line gear you're going to get - though I might have to be a little bit more selective and not get 'one of those, and one of those, and oooh, yeah, two, definitely two of those!!'

However, while you can get your 17 average a guaranteed six times in a row, I can get my average 12 ... uh, pretty much forever.  And if you want to pop some Jazz or Kamikaze, and need to hit that 3 threshold every time you do to avoid that addiction, well ... you might want to read Angels, by our own Critias.  Not the same drug, but you should get the idea.

We finally come to the 'oh, I can get my stuff refreshed'.  Let's look at that, shall we?

... additionally, the gamemaster can reward players by refreshing a single point of Edge in exchange for inventive or entertaining actions in the course of a gaming session. Incidentally, that’s refreshed Edge points, not free Edge points—you can’t go higher than your maximum Edge. Luck only counts if you use it.

• Good roleplaying.
• Heroic acts of self-sacrifice.
• Achievement of important personal goals.
• Enduring a critical glitch without using a Close Call (you get a point of Edge back to balance the scales a bit; this should be used judiciously, though, so as not to always let the players off the hook when they roll a critical glitch).
• Succeeding in an important objective.
• Being particularly brave or smart.
• Pushing the storyline forward.
• Having the right skills in the right place at the right time.
• Impressing the group with humor or drama.

(Emphasis mine.  All this is what used to be defined as 'personal karma rewards'; I suspect they removed this in order to help keep players in a game at a closer overall 'karmic level', but that's just me.)  What you're betting on, though, is that in what used to be called 'a whirling nightmare of combat, confusion, and betrayal' your GM is going to be lenient enough, and you're going to be clever enough, to earn an Edge renewal at least once every two Turns - and, later in the combat, possibly more than once every Turn, because instead of using your Edge to push the limit, or get a second chance, etc., you're going to be burning it so you can roll those 5d6 for initiative.

In short, you are counting on your GM to be very lenient, and you to be very fantastic, with a character that may have a few more toys (and how many, exactly, are you going to be able to use at once?) and yet lower core capabilities in his skills.  I ... really don't see it happening.

Sorry.

[JimmyCrisis]

You amuse me.  Can I keep you?

Lol, sorry there good buddy.  Bound in irons, I belong to another.  I'm flattered.

So lets get started.

For the Edge using Samurai, who we'll call "Edge", Attributes is a priority D, not a B.  With all that money, the street sam's gonna get some good cyberware with high Agility, Strength, or both, and we don't need to have good base stats for that.  Plus, if we're getting super cheaty, we can start with some abysmally low stats and increase them with our 50 points of starting karma.  So, we can safely say that Logic, Charisma, Strength and Agility can all start at 1 and be bought up to 2.  That leaves plenty of attribute points to max out Reflexes and Intuition, giving us an 11 +1d6 to start with for initiative.  In the event that we don't want to use edge, we can use drugs (if we want) for another +2d6 or so.  That's plenty, and it's fine.  Drugs are great because they are very dramatic.  What, do you want to live forever?

With all our ¥450000 money, we're free to take cyberarms and legs with Agility 6, plus armor and Agility enhancers.  If we want Strength for melee weapons, we can get that too or just buy a monowhip. We are living dangerously after all.  So, Edge's Agility for Firearms, Melee and Movement is a 9, Agility for Gymnastics is mostly an 8, and we can keep a cyberarm Gyromount in both arms and have an extra 8 points of Armor with 4 extra health boxes. This is gonna cost us 4 essence and around 250,000¥ with a shock hand and monowhip built in for extra fun.  Well, we can stop there and sink the rest of our nuyen into increased reflexes if we want - the bioware version would take up another point of essence and we'd be pretty much done.  I'm assuming everyone takes a smartlink at this point as well.

Or we could take that money and spend it in a few different ways.  First option, we switch our priorities from A Money and B skills to A skills and B money.  This leaves us with a little extra cash but a lot of extra skills.  Second option, we can buy a Cyberdeck, and cross-class, which can be fun.  Third, we can grab a Control Rig and strap guns on a roadmaster. Fourth, we can focus on being better samurai - Reflex Recorders for our favorite skills, Ultrasound 6 headwear, Enhanced Articulation, Platelet Factories, Skillwires and Skilljacks, additional Strength and Hydraulic Jacks (rating 6) in our legs, and buying things in alpha so that we can spare some essence for upgrades, and purchase all the guns and mundane equipment we'll ever want.

Now, we're human and our C priority gives us 7 edge.  Your samurai still has a 5 edge if they're human, which is fine.  We could have a D priority for edge and still not need reaction enhancement.  Regardless, we're working with 7, so that's 7 chances to go first and 7 extra dice to roll when we really need to.  Add that to our generous B or A priority skills and we're pretty good at doing a variety of things, even with some low stats.  Compare that to your priority C with low edge.  Or don't, we both know that our combat skills will be maxed anyway.  We can safely spend edge to go first in four rounds of combat per run, with an average of 28.5 initiative, almost guaranteeing 3 actions and the first action of the combat.  This should be enough of a head start that we don't need to go first in the second combat turn (because our opponents should be dead).  The most prolonged combat I've seen in this edition lasted 3 combat turns, and the fight was between a Sammy tank versus an adept ninja with drone support.  The most combats I've seen in one run amounted to 3, and they were all very one-sided favoring the runners.

As for edge recovery, any day you can get a hot meal and 8 hours of sleep, you can recover edge, at a minimum.  Between runs you should be fully recovered.  So, let's say you run out of your 7 edge for the run, and your GM isn't letting you recover.  What do you do?  You take drugs, of course!  Lets use Jazz, not Kamikaze.  If you take one dose of Jazz on one run, you will make an addiction test in three weeks.  If you don't have to take Jazz again (in what amounts to three more runs with 1/week, or between runs with 1/month), then your addiction threshold drops to 0 at the third week when you would need to roll - you succeed automatically.  With Kamikaze, you make the same test after two weeks, which drops the threshold to 1.  Kamikaze is more beneficial in combat, but a lot of the bonus is redundant with your cyberware anyway so we prefer Jazz or Cram.  We only use drugs when we absolutely have to, anyway, which shouldn't be every run or every other run.  YMMV.

 ---------------

TL;DR:

As long as you have 7 edge and you are judicious in your application, you can pretty much get away with just using Edge for all your combats.  You might run out, but not likely in any one run.

And that's my synopsis.  CAN you rely on Edge, or Drugs alone for better initiative?  Yes, you can.  Do you run a risk doing so?  You bet!  But is your character viable?  Absolutely.  The big question - would you want to?  Well, that's up to you.  I've built characters that do, and they work fine for my party.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

.... aaaand apparently you completely failed to face the points being made - that two characters created with essentially the same build, one with reflex enhancements and the other without, in a high-action run the one who relies on Edge to get a big initiative is going to burn out pretty damn fast - and be stuck with his 1d6 unless he goes and shoots up.  And yeah, all my characters want to get out of it alive, compared to shuddering spastically in an alleyway, killing other junkies for a hit, his cybernetic limbs no longer under his complete control.

Anyhow.  You go have fun; I think it's clear we have different play styles, so I guess that's where the difference lies.  Enjoy.

[JimmyCrisis]

I've read your piece.  You are wrong and your are rude.  It's an unflattering combination.

[Michael Chandra]

Ran out of Edge on my default 5-Edge Street Sam at the very end of Humanitarian Aid. 7 Edge would have been enough to be a tough threat even into the last fight, would have been able to put a nice round into the jerkweed doc.

[WellsIDidIt]

I've read your piece.  You are wrong and your are rude.  It's an unflattering combination.

That's called avoidance. You ignored the point he made, acted like it didn't exist, and now are deflecting by attacking character instead of actually addressing the point.

Your dismissal of edge being inferior is linked to your premise of "You might run out, but not likely in any one run."

That really only holds up in my experience if A.) everything goes as planned, B.) your GM tosses you at things far below what you're capable of handling, or C.) your GM doesn't use tactics for the enemy.

The moment things don't go as planned and you're up against something that's actually, you know, a competent threat, it goes out the window. In other words, the moment things aren't, to use your words, "very one-sided favoring the runners."

You know like, to use Wyrm's examples, "when you're trying to fight your way clear of the building, or there are a LOT of flesh-form insect spirits to kill, or KE or the Mafia or Yakuza or (god help you) a megacorporation is hunting you down, you need to save your skin a lot."

I don't think I've ever seen any of those situations last a measly 9 seconds with actual competent opponents being run intelligently. But as Wyrm stated, it's quite clear that, "we have different play styles, so I guess that's where the difference lies."

I guess that was far too rude, but I can attest, it is clearly not wrong. In several of those cases, it's easily possible to have more than seven combats in a run, much less seven combat turns.